Landing a recruiting class no easy job for Syracuse University football coaches

Kevin J. Fischer photographyHershey High School two-way star Harold Brantley (44), shown running the football against Red Land in a game Oct. 14, committed to Syracuse University last June. But the senior still took an official visit to Missouri on this final weekend before national letter-of-intent signing day.

Syracuse, NY -- Soon after word got out about Syracuse University football picking up a verbal commitment on Jan. 15 from Georgia defensive line prospect Josh Manley, the senior at Milton High School received a call from a recruiter at Missouri.

Manley, who accepted SU’s scholarship offer hours after returning home from his weekend visit to Syracuse, was invited to the Columbia, Mo., campus for a look around.

“He and I talked. I said SU has made a commitment to you, and you’ve made a commitment to them,” said Milton football coach Howie DeCristofaro, who convinced Manley to skip the last-minute visit and honor his pledge.

As SU coaches try to land their 2012 recruiting class on national letter-of-intent signing day Wednesday, their efforts to bring roughly two dozen players into the Orange fold won’t come without a little turbulence.

Indecision by teen-age athletes, some of them thrilled by seeing their name show up on Internet headlines, or attempts by schools to poach players who’ve given only a promise, can make the days leading up to the NCAA signing period a bit like herding cats for college coaching staffs.

As coach Mike Brennan of Blue Mountain High School in central Pennsylvania puts it: “The process is crazy – at both ends.”

One of Brennan’s players, all-state offensive lineman Jason Emerich, will sign a letter-of-intent with SU.

Offensive lineman Jason Emerich of Blue Mountain High School had a big senior season, and that brought several FBS-school recruiters, even though he'd committed to Syracuse University back in June.

Emerich, a lifelong Penn State fan who was raised in tiny New Ringgold, about 30 miles west of Allentown, was an under-the-radar recruit until he began to blossom during his junior season. After making second-team all state in 2010, Emerich was recruited and offered scholarships by SU, Connecticut, Central Florida, Temple and Akron.

The 17-year-old made a verbal commitment to the Orange on June 28, after attending an SU football camp.

“I just got that feeling about Syracuse,” said Emerich. “I didn’t feel like part of the family at other schools as much as I did at Syracuse.”

But Emerich is somewhat of a rarity, according to his coach. Even though he’d made a commitment before his senior season, Emerich continued to improve, earning first-team all-state honors and grabbing the attention of some other FBS schools.

“He’s one of the first kids I had that committed to a Division I school – and I think I’ve had 16 now – that had a great senior year,” Brennan said. “He didn’t take a step back. He didn’t take a lateral step. He progressed and got better, which is somewhat unique to this early recruiting process.”

Emerich’s improvement also brought around more recruiters – some from programs that would likely have given the Orange a run for its money months earlier.

“There was some interest during the course of the season, and in the postseason, and quickly we squelched it because he’s comfortable at Syracuse,” Brennan said. “I think Syracuse saw back in the spring what everybody else is seeing now. Some of the other big ones in the area are like, ‘We should have went in on this kid, and we didn’t.’”

Brennan would not say who the latecomers were, because of his relationship with recruiters, but the coach said the interest came from three schools – one each in the Big Ten, Big East and Atlantic Coast Conference.

About an hour southwest of Blue Mountain High School, in Hershey, defensive lineman Harold Brantley is another prospect SU coaches mined from the Keystone State.

An agile 6-foot-3 and 280 pounds, Brantley also played fullback for Hershey High School and is a double-figure scorer as a forward on the school’s state-ranked basketball team, which was 16-0 heading into weekend play.

“Syracuse was actually the first school that came in to see me. I developed a good relationship with them,” Brantley said during a recent interview.

After narrowing his list to Penn State, Pitt and Syracuse, Brantley chose the Orange on June 29 after participating in SU’s football camp.

Brantley, who also had offers from Rutgers and West Virginia, said he might have ended up at Penn State if it hadn’t been for the pressure-play the Nittany Lions tried. After offering Brantley and two other defensive linemen a scholarship last summer, the school told him they only had two openings which the first two commits would get.

When Brantley balked and insisted on returning home to discuss the offer with his mother and step-father, he became the odd man out after the other two players committed.

“A lot of schools pressured him, but another thing we liked about Syracuse is that they said we don’t want to pressure you. We want you to figure out what’s best for you,” said Brantley’s mother, Shantih Dean.

That sentiment was being put to the test this weeend, when Brantley traveled to Missouri for one final official visit before signing day.

Brantley, who took his official visit to SU the same weekend (Jan. 13-15) as Manley, also was a late target of Missouri recruiting efforts.

Brian Dean, Brantley’s step-father, said Friday that he wasn’t entirely sure why Harold was taking the late visit.

“I’m not inside his head,” Dean said. “I think he just wants to really be sure.”

DeCristofaro, who spent two years as a graduate assistant at Miami University under Butch Davis, said that kind of recruiting is common, particularly in the football hotbeds of the south. He said the Tigers were probably just doing to SU what some other programs had done to them.

“To me, it sounded like they’d just lost a couple of (defensive) tackles, and now they’re trying to raid someone else’s pantry,” he said.

DeCristofaro did say Manley was getting an in-school visit from SU head coach Doug Marrone on Friday morning. The Milton coach didn’t say whether the visit was impromptu or scheduled.

Whatever the case, chances are good that Marrone and assistants were on the road in full force through Saturday, the end of the final contact period before signing day, trying to make sure roughly two dozen athletes don’t make any surprise decisions.